JMcAllister's assorted clutter

https://youtu.be/ffGIbvjR9gQI was just playing around and came up with this. Don't know what this is supposed to be, but it looked kinda pretty so did a bit of grading and called it finished.

And then I thought, hey, I should start a thread on the HitFilm forum, so other people can give feedback/criticise. (And also so that I have an outlet for experiments and projects - and thus more likely to actually finish them)

I've a few other bits and pieces of things left over from various other things, I'll probably add those to this thread as well over the next day or so.

A couple of months ago I tried to grow trees in HitFilm (also based on something someone said in another thread) and the result reminded me of the song "Forever Autumn" from Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds", so I added text and a clip from the song.

Fun stuff all around! I especially like the growing branches. Had a hunch the base effect was lightning, but wasn't sure how you got the leaves to follow the branches. I don't have Pro (thus no particles), but I'm guessing you had the particles generated based on a luminance map. Is that correct?

@jsbarrett it's a couple of months since I did that shot, but a luminance map sounds about right. I think what I did was make a second copy of the lightning with the animation delayed, and then used the difference between the two as the map to spawn the particles, that way the leaves would only grow from the branches that were still growing. I remember having an animated map that looked almost like like sparks spreading out along the lengths of the branches

Very nice! I thought someone would eventually play with changing the angle mid-turn. It works beautifully! You also added some nice shading to help it feel more three-dimensional. I messed with that a bit, but got frustrated/impatient and didn't push it far enough to work out a solution.

@jsbarrett thanks! Funny you should mention the shading, because tbh the only reason I started making this was because I thought your page turns looked too "flat" and I wanted to see if I could do any better. So I'm kinda glad you didn't add shading, because I probably wouldn't have made this if you had

That looks pretty good! What about it isn't working the way you want? If there's any one feature that's tempting me to purchase Pro, it's Neon Path, but I just can't justify (or flat-out afford) the expense right now.

@JMcAllister That does indeed look pretty good! The bee is just a little further north of my path when I visited Scotland in '89. I went from Dunoon (across the Clyde from Greenock) to Glasgow and on the Edinburgh then back and up to Inverary. I miss it! I can see I'm going to have to have a play with this Neon Path I hear so much about. I'm clueless...

@jsbarrett I was able to use neon path to make a dash that travels along the mask, I was able to use the particle sim to draw those dashes as the original dash went along, I was able to use the particle sim to make the bee follow the dash, but I couldn't figure out a way to orient the bee along the path.

In the end I just rendered out the original dash and then used tracking to get the movement for the bee. That way I could set the bee's alignment to "along motion path"

With the benefit of a day's hindsight I can safely say this experiment is still an overall success. So for now I will file this away for next time I need to do some motion graphics or if I want to animate something very quickly...

@Triem23 you're welcome... tbh I was mostly trying to see if I could make an object (the bee) automatically follow a path that I had drawn out, rather than having to keyframe the movement. The dashed line was an afterthought... but worth it

Particle sim is so versatile... I have used it to automate many things that would otherwise be very difficult to do. Easily the best feature in HitFilm IMO.

True that. In some ways the entire Hitfilm University channel is currently a long build up to the particle sim. It's crazy powerful! There are so many effects questions that could be answered 'Particle Sim' if they weren't being asked by Express users.

Couldn't sleep, so I made some rain. In beautiful black-and-white (mostly)

I might come back to this, and make something "proper" out of the idea, so any suggestions for improvements are welcome. If so, I'll probably start by making that wall-and-bit-of-road into an actual street, and then maybe add some people.... we'll see.

Just my opinion, but something to look into. Axel's using his water particles to drive a displacement effect, but, with a set matte and caustics, you've probably get something EVEN COOLER! Yes, I went all-caps there!.

I see you did a good job getting a nice watery look on your ground plane. Get some real video in there and you really do have the start of a great shot.

Yeah I did think the rain-on-glass looked a bit weird when I rendered it out, seemed ok inside HitFilm although I didn't look at it in too much detail at the time.

But IMO Axel's particle setup is actually worse than the rain on glass effect.

Sure the effect isn't perfect, but at least it has the drops moving in a not-totally-straight-line motion, their speed seems roughly dependent on their mass, and when they get close enough together they are attracted together and merge. And as the bigger drops move, they get smeared out into trails of smaller drops.

Axel's method is fine for generating the drops on the screen (especially since there is more control), but the movements are all wrong. One single drop gets smeared out into a straight line which is somehow the same density (because the distortion is the same), but a bigger shape, implying that it has increased in mass. Where did all the extra water come from? Rain does not impact on glass in perfect straight lines with perfect regularity.

Although I'm willing to admit that the rain on glass effect also has the problem of regularity because the drops seem to follow pre-determined curves on the screen. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen quite so neatly.

But yeah, if I decide to tidy this shot up I think I will try and roll my own. Also because I kinda want it to be windy as well, so the rain wouldn't be travelling straight down the glass and the rain-on-glass effect doesn't seem to allow for that.

Maybe I will make my own rain simulator to model the movement... that sounds like a fun project.

Maybe it would work for paint on a wall as well? Then I could make a suspense film where people are watching the paint running down the wall but the audience has no idea when it is going to dry... Just kidding.